


The Mall Chronicles

by tunajuice



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: GET THESE BOYS SOME SNACKS, Gen, No Combat, POV Original Character, Teen Angst, just boys making friends, normal teen stuff, some language?, teen mentor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunajuice/pseuds/tunajuice
Summary: Amber Villanueva just graduated high school, and her 18-year-old life looks pretty bleak. Wake up, work, rinse, repeat. But during her shifts at the mall's Cinnabon, at least she gets a laugh out of these two weird boys who make the day a little more interesting. Though, turns out these kids have WAY more problems than it seems...
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	The Mall Chronicles

**Author's Note:**

> AU where my teen self-insert OC adopts two troubled Yeerk-fighting youths. As an adult, sometimes I wonder how the Animorphs' relationships with others outside the team developed as the war progressed, and I love exploring how they look to outsiders. Eventually, I want to explore some Tobias and Ax drama from an outsider's POV, and now I'll probably have some time to do so! (Thanks, COVID-19) I'll do my best to update soon! I hope you have as much fun reading this as I had writing it!

I feel like I can’t catch a break sometimes, you know? Or, I don’t know, maybe I’ll never get a break. My old man would probably say I’m not looking for one. I guess I’m not.

It’s pretty shit to wake up at 9:00 AM the morning after high school graduation--itself a blur, like a smudge on a photograph, like a dream of a dream--and to feel in the depths of your soul that you have nowhere to go but your fucking four hour shift at the fucking Cinnabon in the fucking mall in the fucking suburb you will _never_ leave. I bury my face in my pillow. I’m refuse floating in the suburban backwater of America. Even so, I’m not total uncultured swine, though I do have a shitty mall job and my family washes and reuses sandwich bags. I’ve taken an art class. I don’t think Dalí understood surreal. Melting clocks? Whatever dude, that’s not as deep as you think it is. I think surreal is the constant repetition of the same thing over and over until it doesn't feel real anymore. Like, a fucking Warhol or something. Or that one of the identical dudes in business suits or whatever falling from the sky, like rain? That’s the day-to-day surreal. If that happened in front of me at my usual bus stop on Merced on a usual Sunday at 9:23 AM just like every week I don’t think I’d even blink. Real, surreal, it doesn’t matter. Only one place to be.

So, I drag my ass out of bed for my 10 AM shift. I pull on my blue polo, I pick my khakis up off the floor, and I wrestle and tie back my mop of hair. Maybe it would look nice if I styled it sometime. I don’t know, used some hairspray or something. Not like I know how though. My mom is always gone by the time I get up in the mornings, ever since I can remember. She works the early shift at the nursing home, and likes it because she can come home by 2:00. So what am I going to do, right?

I check the mirror. God, it’s like Elaine from _Seinfeld_ stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

9:17 AM. Gotta get to the bus, or I’ll be late. I can’t get written up, that’ll be the second time and I swear to god Ricardo, the GM, is just itching to fire me. The last time he caught me coming in late he was like a dog in heat or something, like just frothing at the mouth and humping the fucking clock, ready to write me up. I can’t _imagine_ what his deal is. I definitely don't get paid to care. 

And the old man is sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper. It’s not like a dad reads a paper on TV; you know, in his house slippers with his glasses, holding it in front of him so he can make some sitcom quip and then retreat behind some front-page Cold War bullshit. No. My old man lies the paper down on the table and leans over it to read it. He cranes his neck up toward the headlines, and leans back more and more as he moves down the page. Sometimes, he’ll hold his bowl of Wheaties over the paper while he does it, which I can’t imagine is comfortable, and the Wheaties just hover up and down the pages as he reads. It’s bizarre.

The old man doesn’t even look up as I trip down the last two stairs and go make some toast. The bowl of Wheaties hovers a little lower down the page. Then, I’m gone.

I don’t mind riding the bus, honestly. It’s air conditioned, which is nice, especially at the beginning of summer. And I kind of wish I had more time to be alone with my thoughts. I mean, I’m not alone on the bus. But I am in a way, you know? It’s like individually packaged, cellophane-wrapped people on public transport, and you can watch everyone around you from your little bubble as long as you don’t break out. But I’m never one to try to start something. I have my mom’s old Walkman and one tape that I like, _I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One_ by Yo La Tengo. I borrowed it from Jessica Davis, but I doubt I’ll ever give it back. She gave it to me like three months ago and we don’t really talk anymore, plus she’s headed to Stanford. She wants to study Eastern European literature, which is no surprise. She read _Crime and Punishment_ sophomore year, and just would not stop talking about the depth of the characters, the richness of the prose, blah blah blah. She knew I wasn’t into it, and promised we would read _The Left Hand of Darkness_ together that summer, but then she went to some writing camp on the east coast. She wrote a postcard, and I read the novel by myself, which was probably better. She kind of turned up her nose at science fiction. Looking back, we didn’t talk as much after that summer. I would call her pretentious, but my heart’s not really in it. I’m not angry about it I guess, more resigned, if I had to call it anything at all.

Well, Jessica has Stanford, and I have her tape. And Cinnabon. Lucky, lucky me.

But sometimes you notice interesting things on the bus and at the mall. The people-watching is choice. My favorites are these two kids. They’ve got to be like thirteen? Two boys, one always in designer clothes that are weirdly always dirty, almost always with this matted, long blond hair, and the other looks like he could be a model. I’ve never seen a kid with cheekbones like his, it’s totally unreal, and his hair looks like it’s straight out of a shampoo commercial--big, loose, brown curls down to his shoulders. I think every time I’ve seen him he’s wearing a souvenir t-shirt, which kills me. I would totally believe the kid is a tourist, if I didn’t see him so often. He seems so excited about everything.

My boys are on the bus, a bizzaro cherry-on-top of a surreal morning. They’re Cinnabon regulars, and at this hour, I’d eat my hat if they don’t follow me into the mall. The blond kid, it’s a hit-or-miss if he eats anything. The model? I once saw him eat a cinnabon and the box it came in, on God, in like two minutes. He inhales them. I love it. Does it freak me out? A little, I won’t lie. But he’s nice enough and doesn’t bite, as long as you’re not a dessert. Honestly, the blond one freaks me out more. Have you ever seen a middle schooler with a thousand-yard stare? He’s like a little ‘Nam vet or something. Or he’s like the model’s handler, the way he takes him around, kind of like a divorced dad taking his kid out to the mall to get a treat. He always seems tense, looking over his shoulder constantly, but in a like, sad way.

I just love to see what they do. Maybe I’ll write it all down some day, anthologize it: _The Mall Chronicles. Tales from the Cinnabon_. Might as well start, I guess. It’s not like I have anything else to do now.

They don’t really do much on the bus this morning. Actually, the blond one has his head on the pretty one’s shoulder and his eyes are closed. He’s sleeping?

The bus hits a bump and the kid’s head lolls forward. Definitely sleeping. The other boy places his hand square over the blond kid’s face and pushes his head back into place, not exactly gently. I smirk. The model looks up at me. Fuck, did I laugh? I look down at my hands and the tape player.

I chance a look up again at the boy. He’s definitely looking at me now, his brow furrowed. I feel like ice water has been poured down my spine. The blond kid has always been the intense one, but all of a sudden it’s like the cute one transformed into a cop.

His eyes meet mine. I break his gaze and try to turn my head toward the front of the bus casually, like it’s no big deal.

Goosebumps run down my arms. Who are these kids?

No big deal. The bus jostles to a stop in front of the mall parking lot and hisses as it lowers to the stop. I’m one of the first ones off, and I don’t look at the boys as I get up to leave. I’m kind of booking it and halfway through the parking lot when I hear the slapping of running flip-flops behind me.

“Wait, excuse me! Miss? Miss!” The footsteps get closer, then there’s a tap on my shoulder. I spun around, and there’s the blond kid, brushing his stringy hair out of his eyes.

“Amber Villanueva?” He reads off of a card in his hand, vi-la-new-AY-va, and then holds it out to me. “I think you dropped your bus pass.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I say. His friend is standing behind him, with a stern expression that doesn’t match his serape-print board shorts and Redondo Beach t-shirt. I would laugh if I didn’t feel so uneasy. “Haven’t I seen you two before?”

“Uh, us?” the blond kid says. He looks back at the other boy, who stares back at him unblinking. “Well, we’re at the mall a lot--”

“I work at the Cinnabon.”

“Oh,” the blond kid lets out a sigh. “Yeah, we’re there a lot.” He looks back at the other kid, who comes closer, now grinning like a moron.

“Ah, you make the cinnamon bun-zzz. Bun-zuh. Bu--”

“Yeah, Ax,” the blond kid says with a hard elbow to his side. “The cinnamon buns. Sorry,” he says to me. “It’s his favorite food.”

Uh, okay? “Sure, yeah. You said his name was Ax?” What the fuck kind of name? I’m kind of laughing now, or at least smiling.

The blond boy, though, doesn’t move. He doesn’t even seem to breathe for a moment, then: “Yeah. It’s a nickname.”

 _Ax?_ “A nickname for what?”

“Uh.” They look at each other real quick. The blond kid is stone faced. “Max.”

“But, Max is already a nickname. For like, Maxwell.”

The blond kid just stares. “Yeah. Not for him.”

Maybe it’s deadpan, but his expression is blank, and there’s not a hint of irony in his voice. Does this kid think he’s being cool? “Okay," I say. "What’s your name?”

“I’m--uh, Ross.”

Sure, and I’m Rachel. “Cool, well I’ve got to go open up, ‘Ax’ and ‘Ross.’ Thanks for picking up my bus pass. Maybe if you come by to get a cinnamon bun, you can tell me your real names.”

Neither ‘Ross’ nor ‘Ax’ are smiling anymore. The blond kid could stare holes right through me.

“Maybe, Amber. See you around.” He turns around and says something I can’t hear to the pretty kid, and they start walking back toward the bus stop, heads close together. The cute kid turns his head back to look at me. What are they, spies? I wave, real big. Dumb kids.

I wonder what their deal is?


End file.
